Benefits of Exercise for optimum health, and weight loss

Here's are some of the benefits of exercise for your well-being as well as for weight loss.

Most adults have heard about the benefits. Of course, that doesn't mean that everyone enjoys them, but at least they have heard about them!

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only about 22% of American adults spend two-and-one-half or more hours weekly in at least mildly intense, sustained physical activity. That's not many!

Exercise will improve not only your body composition. Exercise will also improve your overall well-being.

So, let's find out more!

The awesome health benefits

The benefits of exercise are the closest thing there is to a genuine golden fountain of youth. It's like a top-secret recipe for staying young! Exercise is the closest thing there is to a genuine fountain of youth.

The American Heart Association recognizes that sedentary behavior is an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Are there any associations of illness experts that do not advocate regular exercise?

By (physical) 'exercise' we mean a regular program of strength (anaerobic) training, fitness (aerobic) training, and stretching, all of which are presented here on our free website.

Of all the benefits of exercise, none is more important than improved health.

Did you know that Rene DesCartes, the father of modern western philosophy, thought health the greatest good?

What might be the health benefits for you if you exercise properly? In truth, there are no guarantees about future benefits for you as an individual. None of us can tell what the future will bring.

What you may have, however, are rational expectations concerning your future health. Proper exercise will increase your cardio respiratory endurance; in other words, it will increase the ability of your heart, lungs, and blood vessels to carry oxygen to your body's cells.

This increased cardiovascular fitness really feels good, too. The psychological benefits of exercise should not be underestimated.

Proper exercise will increase both the strength and endurance of your skeletal muscles, which are important benefits of exercise. Other typical benefits for your muscles are that their shape and, especially for men, their size will improve.

Move freely and gracefully through life

Improved flexibility is another important benefit.

A good exercise program will increase your flexibility, which is the ability of your joints to move freely without discomfort through their full range of motion.

You may even be able to increase your flexibility with continued practice.

Moreover, you will be able to maintain flexibility as you age. Decreased risk of injury from falls and other accidents is another the important benefit.

A metabolic furnace to transform your body

You'll lose 1 pound of fat for every 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of body weight you lose.

Both intense cardio and strength training increase fat burning for up to 40 hours after exercising! In particular, strength training increases your quantity of lean muscle that will speed up your metabolic rate 24 hours a day.

Even mild fitness exercise such as brisk walking will increase your metabolic rate during exercise.

This explains why permanent fat loss is one of the benefits of exercise.

Since obesity is itself a risk factor for other common diseases such as type 2 diabetes, stroke, and cardiovascular disease, reducing body fat is an extremely important health benefit.

Therefore, combined with proper nutrition, exercise decreases body fat. As we explain in the Exercise for Weight Loss section of our website, the greater your lean muscle mass, the more calories you'll be able to ingest without adding fat.

This means that you'll be able to eat more food without getting fat!

This will not only ensure that you'll be well nourished, but also that you'll never again need to endure the hunger or food cravings that come with going on a starvation diet. This is really good news if, like us, you enjoy eating.

Strength training also improves the ability of your joints to absorb shocks. It increases the thickness of the hyaline cartilage on joint surfaces. These are some of the unseen, but important, benefits. Unlike the other kinds of connective tissues, cartilage doesn't have its own blood supply to bring it oxygen and nutrients. Instead, cartilage uses synovial fluid, which is generated by movement.

So exercising properly also benefits your joints; in fact, immobilizing a joint can kill some parts of the cartilage. Helping to keep joints working well is another unseen but important benefit.

Strength training is good for your nerves, too. When you move a muscle against resistance, your brain deploys the relevant motor units. When you initially begin strength training, your brain's ability to deploy more motor units and to deploy them more efficiently increases. Though unseen, this is one benefit that you will be able to feel.

Another kind of neural adaptation to strength training that occurs is decreased sensitivity to inhibitory mechanisms such as the golgi tendon organs. This is another way that strength training will improve your neuromuscular system.

After two or three months of serious strength training, your bones will begin to become thicker and stronger. Bone remodeling occurs most in response to those exercises, such as squats and deadlifts, that use the most muscle mass. These are the exercises emphasized in any good serious program of strength training, such as the one presented here on our website. Thicker, stronger bones are another of the important but unseen benefits.

Web pages to help you further

The way to maximize the benefit of exercise is through good nutrition and recovery. This, too, is a critical part of the program presented here on our website. Our dietary program is designed to work in conjunction with your exercise program.

To learn which foods are best, see our healthy eating guidelines. You will find the link to that page on the sitemap/index, which is listed at the bottom of the menu/navigation buttons.

It's a practical system that has real-world effectiveness. If you are going to exercise properly, you'll naturally want to ensure that you maximize its benefits by eating well and resting well. You can start experiencing all the benefits of exercise with our free programs.

You will find the links to those pages on the sitemap/index, which is listed at the bottom of the menu/navigation buttons to the left of this page. Once you begin to experience for yourself how good you can feel, you'll never to go back to sedentary ways!

Alternatively, the link directly below leads to FAT BURNING EXERCISES, which is the first page in this section of our website.

Highly recommended books for this topic

The books are available at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, usually in Kindle and paperback form, and sometimes as hardbacks. If you enjoyed the benefits of the exercise page, these books are excellent further reading suggestions.

On most pages of our website, we aim to recommend the very best books available according to the topic of each page. We endeavor to make the best suggestions based on our own experience and our many years of research in health and fitness. We suggest only books that we have read and can wholly commend.

Additional External Resource

The site includes detailed information about various health related issues and the benefits of exercise.